


strawberry lemonade and smile lines

by sapphicist



Series: dance me to the tune of small survivals [1]
Category: Original Work, Skyrates - Fandom
Genre: 2000 words of incoherent angst, A LOT of Angst, A lot of introspection, Character Study, Gen, i dont know how to tag this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:46:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25280335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphicist/pseuds/sapphicist
Summary: “You know what truly aches? Having so much inside you and not having the slightest clue of how to pour it out.”― Karen Quan, 'Write Like No One Is Reading'--Let's talk about being left behind. Let's talk about grief. Let's talk about children growing up too fast, too quickly.Let's talk about Saph.(a character study)
Relationships: god i dont even know - Relationship
Series: dance me to the tune of small survivals [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1833616
Comments: 15
Kudos: 10
Collections: Skyrates from Knowhere





	strawberry lemonade and smile lines

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Spaghettoi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spaghettoi/gifts), [WreakingHavok](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WreakingHavok/gifts), [Khio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khio/gifts), [miserybug](https://archiveofourown.org/users/miserybug/gifts), [FizzyOrange](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FizzyOrange/gifts).



> this ones for the server

There's a little girl, and she doesn't know her name, and her blood thrums with oil and machinery and technology.

She is seven, she is fourteen, she is twenty one, seven years, seven years between each defining moment of her life, and in them she _changes_ , she changes like a machine upgrading itself, a learning AI improving upon itself, she improves and she wears down because over time, things _wear down if they are not treated gently._

Seven years, and in them she changes, and what, I wonder, happens to machinery that gets left behind? 

~~it rusts. it breaks. it cracks~~

And what do you call that? What do you call a broken machine, a broken machine who was never whole, who was never *new*, what do you *call that*?

Spare parts? Junk? Trash? 

You don't know. I don't know. She doesn't know. 

What do you call that? 

What do you define as living? 

What is a machine? 

What is a human being?

_-_

Is there a word for something like her? 

Something so broken, so _ragged,_ so torn at the edges?

She isn't human. The colors and the numbers and the lightning are more than enough proof of that.

But she isn't a Powered, either. 

She isn't _normal._

-

What even is normal, anyway?

It's overrated, she'll tell you with a flaunt to her words. It's boring. Normal is _boring._

But sometimes, when she's by herself, and there's nobody around to see her break just a little bit more, she will wish to be normal.

Normal is boring, and normal is _easy._

All she's ever wanted was for things to be easy.

-

Here's the thing: they come in two's, at first. 

Her, and the scrawny man she'd grabbed a hold of at the docks when the Colony started to go down.

The mechanic with sharp eyes and an even sharper tongue, and the human who never cowered from a Powered's touch.

The man with kind eyes and kind words--

And the one who came with him.

_Ghet._

-

Ghet, who smells of oil and dust and home, who gives her hugs and talks to her and reminisces, who loves Whataburger and who puts everyone ahead of himself.

He crosses miles in a blink of an eye, brings others with him, too, and god, what she wouldn't give to be _normal_ like he is? 

She's fighting a war inside of herself. A never-ending battle, a wound that just won't heal. 

And he isn't.

He is everything she's not. He is everything she's not, and she resents him for that, even though the feeling makes her sick to her stomach, because she _loves_ Ghet, she really, truly does, but _he doesn't understand._

-

But he reminds her of home, of the best parts of home, of Whataburger and gentle spring days and strawberry lemonade.

So she keeps that resentment to herself, as she does with everything else, and she lets it slip into the deepest, darkest part of herself, where she keeps everything she cannot handle.

-

Understanding is hard, sometimes. And there are moments where even she fails to understand herself.

And those moments are maybe the lowest, she thinks. Because those are the moments when she really sees what the others see. 

So yes. Ghet does not understand. None of them do. 

But that's okay. That's okay. She can deal with that. That's okay.

-

It's not, and she can't -- but she doesn't know that, yet.

-

Let's talk about home.

What is a home, anyway? Where you live? Where you feel safe? Where you feel _happy?_

It's an abstract concept. Most things are, if you think about it. 

And what is her home? 

Texas?

Knowhere?

The crew?

She doesn't know, anymore. What does that mean?

-

What are you, Saph?

-

A monster.

-

When she was five years old, there was a lady who lived on the street with her.

She doesn't remember her name, now -- it was far too long ago. 

But she remembers the smile lines across the woman's cheeks. She remembers how her eyes would light up as she told a story about days long past. She remembers how easily grins came to that woman.

She remembers wondering if she'll ever have smile lines, herself.

-

Her smiles are tight-lipped. Grinning doesn't come easily to her -- it hasn't for a while now. 

-

Let's talk about running.

She's been doing it for a long time now. First it was just hopping street to street -- but then it was running from the cops as they chased her for stealing another part, and then it was her, hand in a strangers, racing toward an evacuation ship on empty docks, fire all around them and her lungs burning and her eyes watering and please, please, please, let her survive, she doesn't want to die, she _doesn't want to die._

-

She thinks she'll keep running until the day she dies -- and even then, she'll keep running, because she has to, because she needs to, because she doesn't know how to stop.

-

In the beginning, it was just the two of them. 

Miles and miles and miles of flaming wreckage and dead bodies behind them. 

Miles and miles and miles of the unknown ahead of them. 

They didn't know what to do. They just kept moving, kept chugging along, hoping, _praying_ for someone to appear and tell them it's okay, to take control, to make everything okay. 

They were so naive.

Hindsight is funny.

-

Truth is a strange thing, in that it echoes and it settles into its finality. 

She is a monster -- truth.

She doesn't know what she's doing -- truth.

She needs to keep running -- truth.

Except, really, one persons truth is another persons lie. It varies. It changes. It shifts, like tectonic plates, as new information is taken in and old information corrected and edited.

What is truth?

What is honesty?

They're two very different things. What does that mean, exactly?

-

Here is a truth and an honesty.

Life has not been kind to her. To any of them. 

She grows up on the streets, scrabbling for every next meal, all hungry eyes and sharp jaws and shaking hands.

Hunger is a familiar danger, to her. 

It does not bother her like it does the others.

-

They're all fighting their own battles, their own wars, their own wounds that will not heal.

And every war is a little different. No one can be inside another person, can see what they've seen, can be where they've been, can do what they've done -- and that's why no one will understand.

Because she did not escape Texas, not like Havok did, not like Ghet did. 

She did not escape Texas. It came with her, inside of her, with how it has shaped her as a person.

Sometimes she wonders if she ever really left.

-

Life is a series of mistakes and learning and repeating. It's a cycle, an endless one, and it is not kind. 

But if it were kind, then we would never learn. 

That, somehow, doesn't make it any easier to bare.

-

There is comfort to be found in Snart, in her lack of fear, in her general friendliness. 

She doesn't judge. She doesn't pry. And when Saph comes to her in tears in the middle of the night, each breath a battle to take, each and every word locked up tight inside of her, she doesn't ask. 

And maybe that isn't what she needs. Maybe that isn't healthy.

But she doesn't care. 

Snart offers a shoulder to cry on. She offers a little bit of comfort in a place where comfort is rare to find. 

Is that not enough?

-

Fizz scares her, because Fizz is _dangerous._

She makes Saph feel known. She makes her feel bared to the world, every rock turned and every secret laid out for her to pick and choose from. 

And Saph is a fortress of secrets. She is a vault, and Fizz has a bomb that can blow the lock clean off, and Saph _can't handle that._

Being known is dangerous. 

"Why do you not like Fizz?" Snart asks her once in the darkness of night. It's just the two of them, sitting on the deck, alone. Below them, a wasteland, a desert, that goes on for miles and miles and miles. Above them, a splattering of stars that are so bright, Saph thinks she might blind herself if she looks at them too long. 

In Texas, there was too much light for the stars to break through. Too much smog, too much smoke, too much, too much, too much, and that's why it all crashed down in the end. 

But here, in the middle of Knowhere, when she looks up, all she can see is stars.

"I don't--I don't _not_ like her," she shoots back, fiddling with her braid. She blows her bangs out of her eyes -- they're getting long, now. She'll have to cut them soon.

Snart snorts. "Uh, you avoid her like she's a fuckin' human pack." Her friend pokes her shoulder. "Seems pretty close to 'dislike' as you can get." 

Saph hesitates. "Just...don't know her well, y'know? She might be dangerous."

"You're _all_ dangerous, Saphie." Snart reached out and fiddles with the end of her braid, tugging lightly. "But I don't see you running from the room when IB or Khio walks in." 

She rolls her eyes. "I don't _run_." 

Her friend gives her a deadpan look. "You run."

There's a flush finding its way to her cheeks, and she turns away deliberately. "I...look, I don't wanna talk about it."

"But--"

" _Drop it._ "

Snart's mouth snaps shut, and Saph immediately feels bad for lashing out, but before she can do anything, the other is sighing. "...fine." She jabs a finger into Saph's chest. "But you better sort this out. If I have to hear Ghet or Havok worrying over you like mother hens any longer, I'm gonna _lose it_." 

Saph laughs, relief flooding through her. "Sure." 

-

Here's the thing: every single person on Knowhere is a walking tragedy. 

They all have stories. They all have fears. They all have traumas.

They're all fighting their own wars. 

But here's the other thing: they're too caught up in their own wars to see the ones everyone around them is fighting. 

Does this make them selfish?

Maybe.

But who are we to judge?

-

Somewhere along the way, she realizes she has fallen in love with being on the ship, and she has fallen in love with the people on it, and she has fallen in love with the freedom it brings. 

This scares her. This _scares her._

-

They cannot afford to be kind to everyone they meet.

Spades is well enough proof of this.

And maybe that's the real tragedy of them. 

Maybe their tragedy is that they cannot afford kindness, not anymore. 

Maybe that's the real nail in the coffin.

-

If she stares long enough into the middle distance, sometimes, out of the corner of her eye, she'll see something...flicker.

This scares her. She swears, every time she does it, that she'll never do it again.

But she is a creature of curiosity, she is, and so every time, she lets her eyes lose their focus, and every time, she sees that flicker.

What does it mean, she wonders?

-

She doesn't understand a lot of things. But her story is only just beginning, the book has only just been opened -- so who knows? Maybe, one day, she will.

-

There's a woman, and she knows her name, and her heart beats with the time of the others. 

The others don't understand, yet. She isn't okay with who she is, yet. She doesn't have all the answers, and she doesn't know what everything means, and she still has a long, log way to go. But she's learning. She's learning. They all are. 

She doesn't have smile lines, yet. But that's okay. That's okay. She has time to love, to cherish, to smile and laugh, and make strawberry lemonade on gentle spring afternoons.

She has time. 

-

There is a girl, and she is not quite happy, and that's okay. 

She's not a monster, but she doesn't know that yet, and that's okay. 

The people around her don't understand, but they will, they _will_ , and that's okay.

And she doesn't have those smile lines yet. She hasn't had a lot to smile about.

But that's okay.

She has time. 

-

She has time.

-

**Author's Note:**

> jesus christ this makes no coherent sense,,,i wrote this all in 45 minutes at 4 am so. apologies. its not as good as i wanted it to be, but its whatever.


End file.
